A Couple of New Patch Birds At Whitesbog

Snow Goose, Union Pond

Possibly  it's laziness or sour grapes, but lately, rather than scurrying around NJ chasing after this or that rarity, I get more of a boot out of finding something unusual in my usual spots.  On the first of the month I was at Whitesbog looking at the Tundra Swans on Union Pond when I saw a much smaller bird with them. As I hauled out the scope and was setting it up on the dike, my local informant pulled up behind me and before I could point out the bird he told me it was an immature Snow Goose and had been there a day or two. I have never seen a Snow Goose at Whitesbog, not even a flyover flock. If you drive the roads around the farms and fields in Burlco, you'll have no trouble finding huge numbers of them, but there isn't much suitable habitat for them around Whitesbog. So I was excited to see one and add it to my patch list. I have a larger list at Whitesbog than I do for most of the counties in New Jersey which just shows how little I'm willing to travel outside my comfort zone. 

A minute or two later my friend pointed out a bird floating on the Middle Bog behind us. He thought it might be the Ruddy Duck he'd seen there the day before, but I could immediately see that it was a gull. Gulls aren't that common at Whitesbog either, except as flyovers. Because it was relatively small, naked eye I thought it was a Laughing Gull, but scoping it I was amazed to see that it was a Bonaparte's Gull. A Bonnie in the middle of the Pine Barrens (sorry real estate developers, the "Pinelands") is a rarity. It was the first record for Whitesbog though probably not the first sighting; my friend doesn't list and in his 50 years of going to Whitesbog, has seen a lot of rarities. If we could only do a direct mind dump of his head into eBird! So that was a second patch bird for me, not to mention a county lifer. 

Snow Goose with adult and immature Tundra Swans

I went back a couple of days later and the BOGU was gone, but the Snow Goose was still there, following around 4 swans on the Middle Bog. When they flew over to Union Pond it chased after them like a kid brother running after the big boys. 

Later that day all the swans disappeared from Union Pond; my local informant told me that they were on the Upper Reservoir in the Ocean County portion of the bogs. Driving over there I found the flock and with them was the Snow Goose. 

Early this morning I was there again; the same flock of 24 birds plus the Snow Goose. This got me to speculating. Why is this Snow Goose hanging around these swans? Did it somehow up in the arctic, imprint on a passing Tundra Swan when it hatched and now thinks it's a swan? Snow Geese eat grass and corn stubble, they don't float around a bog pulling up plants like swans do, yet this goose is always in the bogs with the swans, never feeding at the sides where grass and brush grow. Is this sort of a reverse ugly duckling scenario?  And, just as an aside, what is The Ugly Duckling other than a case study in imprinting long before Loren Eisely came up with the concept? 

Finally, one more question: For the second year in a row, the Tundra Swans that winter in our area seem to have had poor breeding success. There have been few immature swans with the adults. The maximum I have seen is 3 in flock of 30+. Is the Snow Goose a surrogate cygnet for a pair of Tundra Swans? 

So many questions generated by the appearance of one odd goose.

Bonaparte's Gull, Middle Bog